Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

 

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The Future of the Web

The Web is expanding rapidly peaking now at 1.66 billion users worldwide and with a growth speed of 362.3% for the period of 2000-2009. No doubt the Web will continue to radically impact and transform our lives and behavior, the way we communicate and interact. In this article we collected some relevant prediction statements about the future of the Web as seen by the the industry leaders.

The Web Now

"56% of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means (laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player).
Rising levels of Americans using the internet on a mobile handset. 32% of Americans have used a cell phone or Smartphone to access the internet for emailing, instant-messaging, or information-seeking. On the typical day, about 19% of Americans use the internet on a mobile device, up from the 11% level recorded in December 2007." Wireless Internet Use, Pew Internet & American Life Project

"The Web is on the edge to make another large jump. We're more interconnected with broadband and 4 billion cell phone subscribers to access the mobile web." IBM Research

"The current generation of teenagers are very tech-savvy, with 89% owning a mobile phone with a camera and 61% having uploaded a video to the web." webuser.co.uk

The Future of the Web

"The future of the web is box computing, in which you can power up a netbook or mobile phone and immediately pull up a search box without opening a browser or waiting for your operating system to boot up", according to Baidu founder and CEO, Robin Li.

"It is not likely that this artificial Compuserve-like era of iPhone applications can be expected to dominate the mobile content landscape very long.
Let's face it, the mobile web is still a work in progress, making the more sophisticated displays of some mobile apps far more appealing than dealing with the almost-good mobile web functionality that is available on most platforms today." John Blossom

"The trend seems to be towards real-time. We should expect faster information, faster technology, and more filters to help us control it. How much real-time Web we can handle is another question entirely." Benn Parr

"As contextual marketing becomes the norm, a new group of thought leaders will emerge. They’ll drive a need for new technology that makes tracking and understanding online visitors even easier." John Squire

"The Web moves to a VM-based stateful clients with fast communication lines between the client and the server moving tons of strongly-typed data back and forth." Yakov Fain

"So the question becomes what role should government play when it comes to the ever-expanding and more powerful Internet and Web? These key questions will be answered in the years ahead, and the citizenry would be wise to think about them now and offer input to lawmakers - sooner rather than later." ICitizenForum.com

We are in front of a new wave of web innovation. It's fuelled by the simultaneous emergence of location-aware mobile devices (GPS on iPhones, etc) and real-time, one-to-many communication tools (Twitter, etc). The next Internet boom is coming; stay in front of it by staying focused on fundamentals. Mike Berkley

Conclusion
It is not totally clear what the Web will be in the next 5 to 10 years, but experts envision that it will be rather mobile, real-time and service oriented, providing solutions for the users' fundamental needs.

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Written by:
Mihai Moscovici

 

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Where is the Web heading?

It’s in human nature that people never stop looking forward to see what’s beyond the horizon. I was amazed to read an older article written by Janus Boye in 1998 where the author tries to predict what the web will look like in the near future. He does a great job to envision community, technology and usability to become the most important aspects on the web, and we all know this is exactly what happened.

Periodically it’s worth trying to foresee the new trends on the web. Foreseeing is not predicting, it is just drawing a blurry sketch for what may happen… or what would be good to happen.

Users: Communication & Interaction
Since 1998 the Web evolved into Web 2.0. Now hundreds of millions people around the world communicate and interact through social networks. There are no borders and limits to access, share and exchange information between people, while communication and interaction is the drawing force for all social networks.

Users will look for new opportunities to enhance their communication/interaction experiences on the Web. In this regards, Second Life proposed a new approach to enhance users’ communication/interaction experience, but it’s not clear yet whether users will adopt the Second Life concept as “the Web”.

Technology: Compatibility and Integration
Over the last 10 years, web technology was made simpler and more user-friendly. Now the average Internet user has all the tools to make his voice heard by millions. People are becoming “Internet Rockstars” by writing blogs, sharing their pictures and videos, adding value to the existing technology, and simply exposing their daily life.

Next Web technology needs to get smarter so it will become an intelligent assistant for the user. Intelligent technology means the data would be aggregated and processed in a way that the user will no longer need to browse tens and hundreds of pages. Technology of the next Web should be able to allow users to make sophisticated operations in matter of few clicks or short voice commands.

Web industry: Open source and Open standards
Open source is the new and the next industry model of the Web. Open source standards replaced the commercial way to develop technology and conduct business. In order to make its way into the next Web, the open source technology needs to have an improved support and training, to adopt a long term roadmap and the velocity of change.

In terms of business, open source technology will be provided for free, but the money will come into play when extra-value is needed. Open source technology will improve and more paid-features will be provided for free, and businesses will innovate in offering extra-value for money. A new business cycle emerges: businesses propose new paid features that become free as technology evolves, and again businesses have to innovate for new paid features that would eventually become free, and so on.

Conclusion: Innovation
Innovation is the key in breaking the ground on the Web. Five years ago nobody would believe that a service that allows writing 140 characters only will become one of the most popular services on the Web.

The Web never stopped innovating and surprising, and definitely will never stop. The next Web is all about innovating ideas to provide unexpected solutions for always existing problems.

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